But the monster had already vanished from before him.

As Kyle steadied his ragged breathing, the monster’s cry grew gradually more distant.

He strained every sense through the fog-filled darkness to track the creature’s movements.

Shrieeeeeek.

Somehow having climbed a tree, the monster leaped from above and lunged for the back of Kyle’s neck with its jaws wide open.

The moment it tried to sink its teeth into Kyle’s throat, he spun around and drove his sun sword deep into the monster’s white eye as it landed on the dirt.

Thunk.

Kweeeeee.

The monster let out a long, tearing cry and collapsed.

Thud.

“……”

As the monster’s labored breathing grew fainter, the fog surrounding it slowly lifted.

The monster’s form gradually blurred and vanished without a trace.

The madness in Kyle’s red eyes receded to its usual state.

Behind him, the hunting dog lay collapsed in a pool of blood.

Its heart had already stopped.

Kyle closed his eyes and quietly recited the Sun God’s prayer.

In the place where the monster had disappeared, a pale violet stone appeared.

A monster stone.

Kyle put the monster stone in his pouch, took hold of his horse’s reins, and moved on.

He had reached the middle of the mountain when,

“Your Majesty, there you are! Are you all right?”

Lemiere rode up to him on a black horse.

“I’m fine. You’re not young anymore, Chancellor. Why go out of your way to come to a rough place like this?”

“To prove I’ve still got it.”

Lemiere made a flat joke and smiled.

In truth, the reason Lemiere had come was because of Kyle, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so.

Kyle spotted a place thick with black fog.

He was about to ride into it when,

“You must not, Your Majesty!”

Lemiere called out urgently.

Black smoke often appeared when demonic energy was particularly strong.

Lemiere was anxious that Kyle might lose his reason again and go on a rampage.

“Nothing will happen.”

Kyle rode his horse into the black smoke without hesitation.

“……”

Lemiere furrowed his eyes and let out one sigh after another.

Strong demonic energy could affect the human mind as well, and some people experienced auditory and visual hallucinations because of it. That was precisely what Lemiere was worried about.

When Kyle rode into the center of the black fog, everything around him went pitch dark, but anything with a physical body, human or animal, stood out sharply in his vision.

It felt like being inside a dream.

Chirp chirp chirp tweet trill.

A sound struck his ears and he turned to see a flying squirrel gliding through the air.

He breathed in relief that it was not a monster, and just then,

“There you are, Kyle. To see you again……”

A familiar voice rang out from behind him.

Kyle spun around.

A familiar woman in a worn wheat-colored dress walked toward him.

The closer she came, the more Kyle’s eyes wavered.

“It’s your mother, Kyle……”

Tears welled in the eyes of Kyle’s mother, Celline.

Behind Celline, the old cabin where Kyle had lived as a child was visible.

“Come back with Mother.”

“My mother is dead.”

Kyle stepped back, wary.

“Your mother waited for you every single day.”

She cupped Kyle’s cheek slowly, her chin trembling.

Tears filled Kyle’s red eyes as he clenched his teeth, then spilled over.

“Kyle……”

Celline embraced him first, and Kyle squeezed his eyes shut.

“Mother…… I missed…… you……”

“My baby, I finally see you. Let’s live together and never be apart again.”

Kyle nodded, and without realizing it, he had become a boy of seven.

She lifted him up and carried him inside the cabin.

Celline tucked him in and, holding him, began to sing a lullaby.

“I’ll roast a bird for you tomorrow.”

“I love roasted bird.”

Kyle smiled at her with tears still in his eyes.

It felt as though he had returned to a happy childhood.

“Mother……”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t go anywhere.”

“Where would I go, leaving my son behind……”

He was burrowing deeper into her arms to breathe in her scent when the scene suddenly shifted. People from the palace came and forcibly tore Kyle away from her, and Celline reached out her arms and wailed.

“No……! I won’t go!”

Kyle shook his head and cried out too.

It was the scene from that day in his memory.

His vision spun again, and then a panoramic sequence began to play, showing how Celline had lived alone after being separated from Kyle. It was something he had only ever heard about from others.

Driven away in humiliation from the palace where she had gone to see her son, she lay her sick body on the cold stone floor of a slum and, even as she was dying, murmured Kyle’s name without end.

“Kyle…… I miss you…… even in death, I’ll be by your side.”

Hot tears streamed down Kyle’s cheeks.

The fist he had clenched began to tremble.

A vast voice thundered through the forest.

—Take revenge on the enemy who killed your mother. That is justice.

“Who are you?!”

Kyle drew his spear and looked in every direction.

—Do you wish to be freed from your wounds? Follow my words and you will find complete peace.

“Shut your mouth!”

Kyle raged like a madman, sharpening himself against the hallucination, trying not to hear it.

But he could not shake the voice that kept coming.

In the distance, he could see Erald riding his horse.

Count Erald of the Villero family had once opposed Kyle’s succession to the throne on the grounds that his mother was from a minority people, and had been among those who loudly insisted Celline must not be allowed into the palace. At the time, the Villero family had a marriage alliance with Ethan’s Tsepeshu family, so Erald had worked to check Kyle and push Ethan as the successor.

The hallucination came again.

—This is your last chance to put to rest the grief of your mother in the afterlife.

In that moment, why was it?

Kyle found himself thinking that perhaps the voice was the first divine revelation the Sun God had ever sent him.

Old, tenacious emotions surged through him. Longing, rage, self-reproach, anguish, loss……

He had been biting his lip in desperate restraint when his eyes suddenly flew open.

A mad fury burned in Kyle’s red eyes.

“I’ll cut off your breath just as fairly.”

The muscles in his face twisted slowly as he whispered words of hatred.

Kyle’s face contorted in a strange convulsion, and he exhaled a raw, uncontrolled breath.

The fingernails gripping the reins curved into black hooked talons.

His nose gradually became a black beak, and dark reddish-black feathers spread across his face.

Flap flap.

Kyle, now an eagle, spread his enormous wings and fixed his gaze on Erald with killing intent.

Kyle had no idea.

That all of this was hallucination and delusion caused by demonic energy.

That the Erald he wanted to tear apart and kill was in fact Lemiere.

“Your Majesty…… how……”

Lemiere, riding his horse, froze at the sight of the eagle bearing down on him like a predator closing in on prey.

Before the ‘Monster Hunt’ had even begun, he had feared that Kyle might experience hallucinations and delusions from the demonic energy.

Psychic attacks were more devastating to those who carried deep trauma within them.

“Feel the agony of your body being torn apart and obliterated.”

The eagle that was Kyle spoke with burning eyes and a chilling voice.

Kyle’s beak came rushing fast toward Lemiere’s neck.

Lemiere barely managed to raise the shield made by the magic tower’s mages.

“Ugh! Your Majesty…… please, come to your senses!”

Lemiere pleaded desperately with Kyle from behind the shield, his whole body shaking.

But the desperate cry did not reach him.

The thunderous voice rang in Kyle’s ears again.

—If you think of your mother’s pain, do not weaken.

“Your Majesty, did you not say you would not be broken by hallucinations and delusions! Everything you see and hear right now is false!”

When his appeals failed, Lemiere shouted.

Kyle was in turmoil.

Lemiere’s voice and the hallucination rang in his ears at the same time.

—When the revenge is done, you will be reborn anew.

Kyle’s flight grew increasingly erratic.

He circled Lemiere like a broken bird, hovering as if about to attack and then pulling back.

Lemiere looked up at the sight with fear in his eyes.

At that moment,

As if snatching prey, Kyle seized Lemiere’s shoulder with sharp talons and launched into the air.

Lemiere was yanked upward into the sky.

The talons were so sharp they pierced through his leather coat and into the flesh beneath.

It was searing and agonizing, but the situation was too urgent for him to dwell on the pain.

Lemiere looked down briefly.

They had risen so high that the valleys and cliff faces between the Kecherv River and the peaks of Mount Maonerr were visible at a glance.

If Kyle let go here.

Landing in the water would be lucky. Anything else would be a direct trip to the afterlife.